Towards Accountability, Justice, and Ending Impunity in Syria

We, the undersigning organisations, welcome the French prosecutor’s decision to issue arrest warrants against three senior Syrian security officers: first and foremost Major General Ali Mamlouk, the Director of the Syrian National Security Bureau, Major General Jamil Al Hassan, the Head of Air Intelligence Branch and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, the Head of the Air Force Intelligence Interrogative Branch. We call upon the international community to support the initiatives of countries such as France and Germany which enable victims and/or those legally representing them to seek accountability for perpetrators and to reach justice. We also call for support for efforts to launch a genuine accountability process under international supervision and that guarantees and works towards establishing sustainable peace in Syria.

The negotiations and political process in Geneva will not be able to establish a sustainable peace for any future state in Syria without a genuine accountability process and revealing the fate of Syria’s disappeared is at its core. Therefore, we believe that it is our duty and the duty of countries that believe in human rights to prioritise enabling victims to reach justice and ensure there is no impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed in Syria up to this day.

Today, we reap the benefits of cooperation between families of victims with Syrian and international human rights organizations, as well as national judicial authorities, which has resulted in arrest warrants against a number of senior figures within the Syrian security apparatus. We reaffirm our belief in the possibility of justice and renew our readiness to work and cooperate on documenting violations and building judicial files with international and local organizations, as well as international and domestic judicial authorities in countries of asylum among others. We do this in order to secure the rights of victims and place criminal accountability as an indispensable condition for building the future of Syria.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, founded in June 2011, is a non-governmental, non-profit independent organization that is a primary source for the United Nations on all death toll-related statistics in Syria